Trigger Warning: Homophobic Content

Frederick’s life ended the moment his mother had caught him in the barn with the farmer’s son.

It was his first kiss, and, considering what had happened immediately after, he wasn’t sure it was worth it. Peter definitely hadn’t been. That was his name.

The boy that he’d kissed.

Peter had been unremarkable in nearly every way, but the effect he had on Frederick’s life was little if not lasting.

Looking back, the whole thing seemed a little silly. It had taken him nearly three weeks to work up the courage to ask Peter over: three weeks of clumsy, shy glances before they’d finally met up that night in the barn.

But his mother hadn’t been far behind. She’d come for salted meat to add to that evening’s stew but had left with red stinging one hand and Frederick’s ear in the other.

It wasn’t until two days later when she handed him the handkerchief of cornbread and an address that he didn't know how to find that he’d fully grasped the situation he was in. They were short on money, and the post had brought news of a job offer up north that had urged his mother to decide that she actually didn’t need his help skinning and stringing the livestock. There had been no goodbyes, not even a parting embrace, and she had locked the door the second she had managed to wedge his stumbling feet out of it.

Now he was a day’s journey north with no sense of direction and no clue where the address was supposed to lead him. He’d been going north when he’d started out; he knew that because he’d walked past the church at the northern end of town. Whether or not he had unknowingly veered off path sometime during the day, it didn’t seem likely that he was going to stumble across his destination by accident.

It was starting to get dark, and he knew from experience that he only had about an hour before the wolves started howling. Better to make some sort of camp and figure out where he had left the path in the morning than stumble unknowingly into the mouth of a wolf.

He took his time making the preparations. Each movement was careful, measured. It was easy for him to lose his composure, but when he was concentrated on a task, it consumed all of his attention. When he was younger and he had still been going to school, his teacher had told his mother that he worked slower than the other students—his mother had been sure to tell him, never wasting a chance to tell him how much of a burden he was—but he had never felt that way. It was calming, peaceful.

In everything he did, he wondered if there wasn't a better way to be doing things. A more efficient brushstroke that would let him write quicker, a sturdier way to secure his food bag so it wouldn't fall when the night birds came and pecked at it. 

He'd always slept outside, so it didn't take long for him to tie up his supplies and attach his hammock to two branches of one of the trees. He was lucky that they were big enough that he could sleep in the branches rather than down by the ground.

With a few last tugs on the ropes of the hammock, he settled in for the night. He was in an entirely new place, but the wind and the call of the night birds were the same. He might not know where he was going, but at least he knew where he was.